One of the useful things about returning to an area time and again, over a period of years, is you end up with a unique photographic record of exactly what has been going on underwater in our bays. The story of diseased corals, coral ‘cancers’ (growth anomalies) and their gradual take over by opportunistic algae and cyanobacteria (slimy, filamentous mats) is insidious.

If disease were spreading through our native forests, if our trees were developing strange growths that hollowed them out making them brittle in the face of each passing storm, would five years have slid by with the problem worsening by the day?

Have you ever heard of shifting baseline syndrome? Soga and Gaston (2018) describe it here:

With ongoing environmental degradation … people’s accepted thresholds for environmental conditions are continually being lowered. In the absence of past information or experience with historical conditions, members of each new generation accept the situation in which they were raised as being normal.

… [S]hifting baseline syndrome (SBS) … is increasingly recognized as one of the fundamental obstacles to addressing a wide range of today’s global environmental issues.

In this post, I present evidence of the past: lest we forget and succumb to our own shifting baseline syndrome. I show you what parts of Norfolk Island’s reef looked like then, and what they look like now.

Bear in mind that I began taking photographs five years ago because I was shocked at the deterioration of the reef from how I remembered it in the late 1990s. Since January 2020, and since I’ve been raising the alarm with anyone who cares to listen, the reef has deteriorated further still.

I could have included many more examples, but these photos suffice to illustrate my point. My images show exactly what is happening to our reef. And it isn’t pretty.

I’ve tried to match the angles as closely as possible.

Above: I called this Acropora colony the ‘stairway reef’ in my files. It was one of my favourite spots. It gradually developed white syndrome at places along its length, compromising its health and integrity. When we had a storm surge in December 2023, it was smashed apart.

Above: When I first started photographing this bommie, it was already exhibiting signs of white syndrome. Today, algae covers the dead coral skeleton with little to show of the once-beautiful Montipora coral. The fishes that called it home have gone elsewhere.

Above: This is a hammer coral, Fimbriaphyllia ancora. The photo on the left would have been among the first that I took with my new camera Christmas present. In the photo you can see peachy-pink colouration. This coral would have been just about to spawn. In the image on the right, taken nearly five years later, you can clearly see that this slow-growing coral, which according to iNaturalist is listed as vulnerable on the IUCN Red List, is not faring so well.

Above: In November 2023, in the central channel area, this stunning Hydnophora pilosa, one of a group, developed white syndrome. You can see the small round patch in the first photos on the left (top and bottom). By December it had quadrupled in size and, mercifully, it stopped spreading shortly after. Today, the dead patch of coral skeleton is covered in algae, so unless you had seen what happened, you wouldn’t even know it was there.

Above: This area of the bay is badly affected by coral ‘cancers’. They are those lumpy looking growth anomalies that you can see in the photographs. These weaken the coral’s skeleton making the coral less resilient to storm surges. Each photograph can be compared from the top to the bottom. There are other areas of the lagoons affected by these cancers.

Above: As is often the case, when I first came across this site, white syndrome had already taken hold, which is why my attention was attracted to it. Within weeks an extensive area on this part of the reef was dead. Again, compare the top photograph to the bottom. Today this area is dead, overgrown with algae and cyanobacteria.

Above: These three little Paragoniastrea Australensis corals (the boulder corals) were surrounded by healthy Montipora back in 2021. Today much of the Montipora has gone.

Above: This coral is in Slaughter Bay. Over the years it has struggled.

Above: Another example of coral cover being severely reduced by white syndrome and replaced by algae.